Almost seven years ago, Matt wrote me this song… the second song that belongs only and always to me.

I’m in love with him seven years later.

Because he’s stopping the dog from choking herself in the computer power cord right now.

And because he gave me Penelope. And this song.

Lullaby by neenertronics

First song coming tomorrow…

As I mentioned the last time I wrote, the past few weeks have been sort of busy. We did a lot of traveling in April, then came home to have two weeks of drywallers in our house followed by a week and a half of guests. And then there was the Tennessee Flood of 2010. Mixed in among all of that were trips to Home Depot to fix up other parts of our house, trips to the midwife, and more social engagements than I think I’ve had in the past five years.

Which meant Berlin spent a lot of time sleeping on her bed all alone.

After I dropped my mom off at the airport last Saturday morning, it was as if Berlin got a new lease on life and she’s been euphoric ever since. We were home most of the weekend, and while running around a bit this week, at least one of us has been home at almost any given time since then. Berlin’s getting evening fetch with her dad again, something she had gone weeks without. And she has morning snuggles with her mom, something that was traded in for rushed early mornings when I needed to be up to let the drywallers in.

In fact Berlin’s been so happy over the past few days that she appears to have sprained a leg while playing too hard outside. It looks really painful, yet her tail is wagging frenetically because to her, life seems to be back to normal! It’s just the four of us in the house again! So she spends her days randomly going in and out of her dog door – inside to snuggle for a while, outside to play. And she couldn’t be happier.

They say you’re supposed to prepare your pets for your baby’s arrival so that they don’t become territorial or aggressive. I’m not at all worried about that; Berlin doesn’t have an aggressive bone in her body. But I am going to be sad to see my happy girl return to long days sleeping on her bed from lack of attention.

We have about five and a half weeks (give or take a couple days) left of this life that we know so well before it all radically changes. Now that my nesting urge seems to be calming down a bit, I just want to spend each day soaking in the normalcy. Until we have a new normal defined for us.

Over the past… eh… week and a half, life has been spinning at an absurdly fast rate of speed. Suddenly all of these carseats started arriving at the front door, which made it absolutely necessary for me to remove them from their boxes, inspect all of their moving pieces, read all of the installation instructions (holy cow!) and proceed to vacuum, detail and wash both of our cars.

It was bittersweet cleaning out our Volvo wagon, because I knew I was ultimately cleaning it out to be replaced. The little guy has been everything we could have wanted for carting around drywall and a muddy dog over the past few years, but has now gotten to a place where it needs major repairs – repairs that are significantly more expensive than the car is worth. As of December it won’t pass inspection without those repairs, so we’re planning on replacing it, perhaps with an Outback, perhaps with something else.

We’ve put 85,000 miles on our already well-loved wagon in almost five years, which is crazy considering it was my car and I took public transportation to work for 2 of those years and was at home for another year. Matt’s jobs have always required an outrageous amount of driving, so we’ve had to face the fact that we will inevitably replace cars sooner than the average American family. It’s a bummer on the wallet, but has gotten us pretty adept at car shopping over the past few years.

This Saturday we had an appointment to test drive an Outback and a Forester; the former we decided was the car for us. We’re wagon people. We like having a five-seater with lots of storage capacity and good gas mileage. We like a car that drives well in the snow, not that that matters so much anymore. We like a car that you can put a muddy dog in and not think twice about.

But I didn’t like how the smug salesman was unwilling to negotiate down to the price I wanted. So today I called down to a competing dealership to see what the Polish salesguy could do for me. After I played a Chris Matthews-worthy version of hardball, he made me some good promises that the car we’d be special ordering would come in right at the price we are willing to pay.

I like the Polish people. They make great sausages. And sweet sugary baked goods.

I’ll hear back from my friend later this week, and I hope he has good news for me. Yeah, I want a new Outback, but more than anything I’m just gnawing at the bit with an insatiable desire to install this adorable new carseat!

Until then, I can bide my time re-reading the owner’s manual.

Do you know how warm it was here yesterday? LOW SEVENTIES. The type of day where you go outside and sit in the sun and will come in with a little pink on your white-as-a-fish’s-butt arms. Moving to the South might have been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Marrying Matt coming in second, of course.

The downside to the heat is that our house is full of original rope and pulley windows that we are attempting to restore, but only half of which actually open. The other half are stuck shut. Which means we could turn on the AC in the house, but c’mon! I’m not only a cheap Yankee, but I’m a cheap Yankee who thinks it would be ridiculous to turn on the AC when the thermostat is registering 73. Unfortunately I’m also a pregnant woman in her third trimester who frequently has hot flashes and is constantly accompanied by a pitcher full of ice water wherever she goes. So a compromise had to be made.

I was awfully warm at bedtime and decided the fleece pj pants were a bit much, but there ain’t a heck of a lot of other things I can fit into these days. So I stripped down to that which I could feel morally upright with wearing to bed while carrying my daughter in my belly, and turned on the overhead fan for a nice breeze to sleep under.

And that’s when Berlin’s world came to a screeching halt.

Because didn’t you know that overhead fans ARE THE DEVIL!?! That they are the scariest machine man has ever made? And that they were created to kill and torture dogs with anxiety? Specifically HER?

She was petrified of her normally safe den, our bedroom. She wouldn’t walk in, and even when she was forced into the bedroom, she sat slumped over on her dog bed looking at the corner. She wouldn’t jump on the bed, she couldn’t fathom looking at the ceiling, and there was no way in heck she was going to eat her dinner in that setting. After all, that overhead fan was there to kill her.

This is where I take a little rabbit trail and tell you how hard I laugh when people ask us if we’re ready to be parents. They chuckle and say things like, “Oh just you wait! Wait til YOU have to try potty training! Wait til YOU’RE fighting picky eaters at the dinner table! Wait til YOU just want to give in and let them win!”

They’re probably not aware that by day my husband potty trains 200 pound 17 year old boys with multiple developmental disabilities and tendencies towards self-injurious behavior. That seeing a child throw a large table across a room DOES NOT PHASE HIM. And that when he comes home at the end of the day, he patiently works masterful therapy on a schizophrenic dog who is afraid of ROTATING CEILING FANS, finally coaxing her onto the bed to wrestle and wag her tail.

Then we lay in bed after all of this and laugh about how funny it all is – our dog who requires daily sessions with the shrink. We roll our eyes and discuss how as miserable as she is with the ceiling fan on, and as hard as it is to watch her be so scared, we’ll keep it on all night because we’re going to win this battle. That it’s just not appropriate for her to be afraid of ceiling fans. Remember how she used to be afraid of the TV? And the back porch? And riding in the car?

Maybe I sound a little bitter, and I apologize for that. It must be because cleaning vomit off the carpet in the middle of the night, calming a frightened creature at the vet’s office, and leaving the party early to get back to someone’s bladder control schedule has not adequately prepared me for parenthood. Excuse me while I get up to leave, in the middle of my hour of internet peace, to run to the store and get cat food. Because we’re all out, and while I have a million things I need to do to pack up and go to Chicago for the weekend, his needs come before mine.

Oh boy, are we in for a surprise!

Y’all know I’m no expert and that I’m very much a first-timer. But I have loads of friends who are just now finishing up their first trimesters and letting the proverbial cats out of the bag. First of all, I’m super happy for you guys. And I promise to walk with you through pregnancy and not hand out unsolicited advice other than this… GET A MIDWIFE! Ok, I promise it’s out of my system now.

I read a ton of books about pregnancy, labor and delivery, even though I never really thought I would. I thought I would want to embrace the “Ignorance Is Bliss” philosophy, but after reading one, you just get sucked in over and over again!

So here are my book recommendations for whiling away the hours when you can’t sleep at night.

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth – If you read NOTHING ELSE in your whole pregnancy, you will be fine after having read this book. You might go into it thinking she’s quacky, and with some of the stories and photos you might continue to feel that way. But stick it out and then tell me she’s a quack after finishing it all. For real, it will change your life. And you will likely feel capable of saving the world. Go for it!

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth – I highly encourage you to read this book which is set up a bit more on a timeline ala “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” without all of the “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” and “YOUR BABY IS GOING TO DIE!” crap that What To Expect throws in there. Along those lines, don’t listen to ANYTHING that What To Expect says about miscarriage. They are big fat jerks and I want to kick them in the genitals. “Our Bodies, Ourselves” addresses what you need to know about miscarriage, and while we’re also on miscarriage can I please take a moment to shout from the rooftops that most women do not need D&Cs! Your doc might just schedule you for one routinely, but know that you probably do not need one unless you had a complicated or late miscarriage. Your body will take care of things fine on its own, and you’d rather be lying in your bed eating mac n cheese, weeping and playing cards with your mom than coming out of a druggy-invasive-procedure- fog. Just sayin.

You: Having a Baby – After the disasters that are Dr. Phil and Rachel Ray, it’s hard to believe that any made-famous-by-Oprah character could be any good. But Dr. Oz contributes to this fascinating book that tackles a lot of interesting genetic stuff regarding your baby. It’s the first thing I’ve read that relates honest information about the little truth we know regarding autism (AKA: not Jenny McCarthy’s lies). That’s of course not the focus of the book, but it discusses your pregnancy on a molecular level which is kinda fun. I wish I had read this earlier in my pregnancy, and you’ll want to read it as soon as you can, because it can help you get on a good, healthy path for the nine months ahead.

Finally, there was a beautiful book that my sister-in-law, Beth, showed me over Christmas and I sat down and read in its entirety at her dining room table. It’s a book on newborn care written by a Swedish author filled with stunning photography. I enjoyed every page of it, then came home and promptly read it again in the library. But Christmas was a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten the name of it, so I’m hoping Beth can fill us in on what it was. Pick up a copy just to look at the photos, if nothing else.

I’m venturing a guess that having babies is similar to getting a puppy, and the expecting moms I know were all puppy-owners at one time. (Of course experienced moms are going to say there are no similarities, but we all know it’s just because they don’t get enough sleep.) Before getting Berlin, I read a slew of books on puppy training and what to do and what not to do and hoped beyond hope that we’d have a well-behaved crate-trained little beauty. I also thought she’d never play fetch because of her anxiety. Well, the pup hates crates, but will sleep curled up on the floor next to us wherever we are all well-behaved-like. She never chews on furniture and would rather play fetch than eat, even. So all the book-learnin I acquired from the Monks did nearly jack squat for me. I think the fact of the matter is that your intuition and your unconditional love will win out in the end.

But still read the Ina May book.

Our two winners are Cara and Gina! Congratulations!

Cara sent me this adorable picture of her two pups, Jacques and Gus waiting for peanut butter cookie dough at Christmastime. How cute are they? I’m sure they’re going to love their new treats!

Thanks for participating, guys!